“Well, what are you sure about? What do you know about him?”
At that moment Kenna realized just how little she did know about Clark. “He’s only worked here a month and he stays to himself. I’ve only had a brief conversation with him myself.”
Lynette shook her head and smiled ruefully. “Then you’re no help. I think I’ll mosey back over there just to make sure he notices me like I’m noticing him.”
Kenna lifted a brow. “And what about Shaun?”
“He’s had his chance,” Lynette said dryly. “Besides, sometimes reality hits you in the face and makes you realize when you’ve been wasting your time.”
Kenna simply nodded and watched as Lynette returned to where Lovell was still walking Aleena around the corral on the pony. She stood there and stared, taking it all in, while Lynette did a little flirting. It was hard to tell from where Kenna was standing if Lovell was being receptive or not.
“Alex called after I finished talking to Dex. He’s dropping by sometime tomorrow to pick up that book you had for Christy,” Reese said, returning.
“All right.”
He followed the direction of her gaze. “How are things going? Looks like Aleena is enjoying herself”
A smile touched Kenna’s lips. She was tempted to say Aleena’s mother was enjoying herself as well. “Things are going well, and yes, I think Aleena is having a good time.”
“So what’s this I hear about you and Kenna finally realizing that the two of you are more than friends?” Alex said as he slid into the chair in Reese’s office.
Reese leaned back in his desk chair across from Alex, thinking news sure traveled fast. Christy certainly hadn’t wasted time giving her husband the scoop. Any other time he would have denied everything, but the truth of the matter was that Alex was right. He and Kenna were more than friends. “Yes, you heard right.”
Alex chuckled. “About time. I figured it out a while ago. When you’ve been in denial yourself, you tend to recognize it in others.”
Everyone knew Christy had had a crush on Alex as a kid, but most people assumed she’d grow out of it. The family had been surprised to discover that wasn’t the case. But Reese knew no one had been more surprised than Alex.
Unless they ran into each other at the Madaris Building, Reese and Alex rarely saw each other these days, so they spent the next few minutes catching up on their favorite sports teams.
The conversation was interrupted when Reese received a call from one of his men, whose wife was pregnant, announcing that he was the proud father of a baby boy. When Reese hung up the phone he noticed Alex was staring out the window.
“Who’s that guy out here in the red shirt?” Alex asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”
Reese walked across the room to join Alex at the window and looked out. “That’s Clark Lovell. I hired him about a month ago.”
Alex nodded as he continued to stare at the man. “Is he from around here?”
“No, he’s from somewhere up north. Boston, I think. He’s a loner with no family. He came highly recommended from the last ranch he worked. He’s good with horses.”
Alex nodded again. “He lives here on the ranch?”
“Sometimes. But he also has a place in town and stays there most of the time.” Reese studied Alex’s features. “Why do you want to know about Lovell?”
Alex shrugged. “His face looks familiar. He reminds me of someone.”
Alex felt his phone vibrate, letting him know he’d received a text message. Moments later he smiled after reading the text from his wife. “Christy needs me to make another stop before I get home. Since she can’t go out by herself, she has me running all her errands.”
Alex grinned. “But then there are benefits to keeping your woman locked behind closed doors. You might want to keep that in mind.”
As Alex drove away from Tall Oaks, he had a nagging suspicion that he’d seen Clark Lovell somewhere before—either personally or on a case. But what case? Had the man been involved in something illegal? Did he remember him from a police lineup? Knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied until he had some answers, he punched in a single number on the keypad on his dashboard.
“Yes, sweetheart. Did you forget what I asked you to bring home?” a sexy voice inquired.
He chuckled. “No, but I would like you to do me a favor after you’ve put A.C. down for her nap.” A.C. was the nickname for their two-year-old daughter, Alexandria Christina.
“What’s the favor?”
“I need you to put your investigative skills to work and come up with anything on a Clark Lovell. He’s a new hire at Tall Oaks and there’s something about him that’s familiar.”
“Familiar in what way?”
“His face. Although from what I remember, his hair might have been a darker shade of blond, even a light brown. I’m not sure.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with.”
Before they’d married, Christy had been an investigative reporter and one of her assignments, which nearly ended her life, was an award-winning exposé. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
He settled back in his seat, satisfied that he would soon have some answers.
He looked at himself in the mirror. It was time. He needed to kill like he needed to breathe. And he knew just what part of Houston he would hit this time. He knew he had the police scrambling and wondering what his next move would be. Too bad they didn’t know, but he knew what their next move would be. Good for him, but tragic for them. He smiled as he headed out the door.
“I think Alex had the right idea,” Reese said in a raspy voice as he stepped into the room that Kenna had been using as her art studio. He closed the door behind him and locked it.
Kenna glanced over at him and smiled. “The right idea about what?”
“Keeping your woman locked behind closed doors.”
Kenna warmed with pleasure at the thought that he considered her
his woman.
And then there was the way he looked at her. It made her stomach quiver so much that she wondered how two people could generate so much heat.
She looked away from him and turned her attention back to the canvas. “Thanks for letting Aleena ride your pony. She and Lynette had a wonderful time.”
“You don’t have to thank me. It was wonderful having them. They can come back anytime.”
“They’ll like that, especially since I think Lynette has her eye on Clark.”
Reese chuckled. “Does she?”
“Yes, and I have to admit that before she left she had managed to warm him up a bit. I saw him smile a few times.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I would have invited her and Aleena to dinner one evening next week, but starting tonight Lynette is going undercover for a week.”
Reese raised a brow. “Who keeps Aleena when she’s working undercover?”
“Her parents or one of her sisters. They’re close like your family.” She thought for a minute about just how close his family was. The meeting this week was just one example of how the Madaris family looked out for one another.
“So what are you painting?” he asked. Before she could respond, Reese walked around the easel to see for himself. She watched as a huge smile curved his sexy lips. “Hey, that’s me.”
She laughed. “Yes, it’s you.”
He studied the painting, taking in every detail and then giving her a sidelong glance. “You were able to paint a portrait without me posing?”
“Yes.”
“How?” he asked, turning to her.
She glanced up at him. “From memory.”
He glanced back at the canvas and then at her and held her gaze. She knew what was going through his mind. She had painted him from memory. She had captured every detail and nuance, leaving nothing out. There was the deep set of his eyebrows, his sculpted cheekbones and chiseled jawline, the dark brown shade of his bedroom eyes and the rich copper tone of his skin. She had drawn the perfect bow shape of his lips, in all their decadent splendor.
For her to do that meant he was etched in her memory in a way that Reese would never have thought possible. And from the look on his face, she could tell he was touched.
“You actually painted this from memory?” he asked in a low, husky tone.
“Yes.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “What possessed you to do that?”
She leaned close to him and snuggled against his body, needing to feel his warmth and the love he’d professed to her.
“I was going to put it in my new condo on my bedroom wall, so that you would be in my room every night.”
It might have been what she said rather than the way she said it, or it could have been a combination of both. Whatever the reason, Reese pulled her closer into his arms and kissed her. He was kissing her in such a way that he left an indelible impression on her lips. It left no doubt in her mind just how he felt.
She’d always known he wasn’t a man given to casual affairs, and most of the women he’d dated had been long-term relationships. But she doubted that any of them had ever been kissed this way by Reese Madaris. It was as if he had claimed her as his and his alone.
He slowly pulled his mouth away and then proceeded to use the tip of his tongue to trace the upper ridge of her lip and then sweep the outline of her mouth, licking, nibbling and doing naughty things to her. Heat was flooding every part of her body, and if she hadn’t been leaning against him for support, she was certain she would have melted right to the floor.
“I never knew you cared that much,” he whispered against her moistened lips. “I never suspected that you loved me.”
“Typical,” she teased in an attempt to make light of what he’d said when she knew deep down just how serious he was. “But how could you not have known—even though I tried hard to keep it from you. Didn’t you suspect something when I turned down that scholarship to go to Paris?”
He pulled back, his brow furrowed and his brown eyes speculative when he realized what she had sacrificed. He remembered when she’d passed on the chance to study art in Paris. Instead, she had opted to remain in Austin while he was in grad school and use her gift by going to work for the police department as a sketch artist. “Are you saying you didn’t go to Paris because of me?”
She eyed him warily, not certain if she’d revealed too much.
He had a right to know just how deeply she loved him and always had.
“Yes, there was no way I could have left you, Reese. I would have been miserable, heartbroken.”
She exhaled a long breath. “And that’s why I took the job in Austin, so I could be near you.”
“Is that the reason you took the job here in Houston?” he asked, not breaking eye contact with her.
She shook her head. “No. To tell the truth, that’s the main reason I didn’t want to take it. I felt I had to face the fact that one day you would marry someone, and as much as another woman might say our ‘best friend’ relationship was fine with her, I couldn’t allow myself to get too close. I thought that eventually you would realize that I wanted more than friendship and begin backing away.”
“So you thought the best move was to put distance between us, right?”
She smiled, deciding maybe he wasn’t all that slow after all. “Yes, that’s right.”
At that moment Reese didn’t know what to say. But he did know he could never love her any more than he did at that very moment. For all those years she had loved him and he hadn’t had a clue. He could only think of all those wasted years he’d spent with other women when he could have been with her. And all those times she’d spent with men like Terrence, Lamont, Curtis when it could have been…
should
have been him.
He should have been the one who showed her how a real man treated a woman. He should have been the one courting her, the man who would never have let her walk to her front door alone after a date. She deserved all those things and much more. And more than anything, she deserved to know just how much she was loved, just like she’d shown him how much she loved him with her selflessness.
“Do you know what I plan on doing?” he asked her softly, leaning closer to place a kiss on her temple.
“No, what are you planning to do?” she asked, smiling.
He tilted her chin up so their eyes connected. “Starting now, this hour, this minute, this very second, I plan to show you each and every day of your life just how much you are loved, admired, respected, honored and cherished. And then when you think you can’t possibly get any more love from a man I’m going to prove you wrong.”
He stood there, watching her, studying her features, seeing how her eyes lit up as the full impact of what he’d said took hold. There was something so spine-tinglingly sexy about that moment, seeing her standing there in her bare feet and wearing one of his old T-shirts that fit her voluptuous body perfectly. Just looking at her made his entire stomach flutter in a way it had never done before.
“And how do you plan to do that?” she asked softly, as curiosity shone in her gaze.
“I won’t reveal my secrets, but it will be the Madaris way.” And then to show her what he meant, he leaned down and slanted his mouth across hers.
Kenna heard herself moan when Reese deepened the kiss, and she stretched her limbs to tiptoe as her body reacted instinctively to his. She felt his hands trailing down her thighs, touching her bare flesh. The feel of his fingers was warm, and the slow seductive way they moved across her skin was stirring intense pleasure within her. When he slid his hands higher to make their way under her T-shirt she knew it was only a matter of time before he realized she wasn’t wearing any panties.
Heat burned through her the moment the discovery was made, and when he touched her intimately, her thighs automatically widened to allow him all the access he wanted. With quick and sure fingers he moved beyond her womanly folds to insert one finger inside her.
His touch always had the power to send her over the edge, but for some reason she felt tonight he intended to toy with her, drive her crazy with desire, turn her body into a sexual frenzy before satisfying the need he was slowly stoking within her. He didn’t prove her wrong when his gifted hands continued their torment, using the rhythm of his fingers to stroke and spin her out of control. “Reese…”
“Yes, baby,” he whispered softly against her ear while slowly walking her backward until she felt her back pressed against a solid wall. Her breath caught with the intense look of heat in his eyes when he pulled his hands free from her.